The wasteland finally gave way to rising stone, towers of gray-blue rock that pierced the clouds. As the armored transport rumbled closer, the shift in atmosphere was impossible to ignore. The air grew denser, wilder.
More charged.
And then... the mountains revealed themselves in full detail now that they were getting very close.
It quickly became clear that these were no mere mountains. Or, to be more accurate, they were now sporting unnatural additions.
Colossal structures, mansions, fortresses, and multi-story halls were carved directly into the cliff faces. Huge terraces hung over sheer drops. Balconies jutted out over thousand-meter drops as if gravity were optional. Runic channels glowed along the edges of stone battlements, all of it forged with a precision no earthly construction pany could ever dream of.
They were guild halls.
Forged by a smith-class awakened.
Hammered into existence by artisans whose craft not just bordered on sorcery but was defined by it.
"Whoa...!" Aria breathed, eyes wide and sparkling. "Why even build them there? There’s enough flat ground out here to make a whole damn city."
Nyx tapped her chin thoughtfully, with pink eyes reflecting the mountain glow.
"Maybe it’s for safety? Monsters can reach ground-level structures easily, but scaling a whole cliff? I suppose that should be a much taller order."
Luna snorted like someone who’d just overheard a bad theory. "These guilds can vaporize anything that can’t sprint up a mountain wall. They’re not worried about monsters tipping over their mansions. In fact, I’d argue that defending those buildings up there is more challenging because it’s harder to fight back against flying monsters who’d be in their element now that they do not have to approach the ground."
Bastet leaned forward, staring at the highest hall, one with a multi-winged fortress spiraling around a stone spire like a coiled serpent.
"Perhaps the first guild built their hall up there," she mused. "And then the others refused to build beneath them, on the ground like peasants. Pride demanded equality or superiority."
Calypso’s grin was immediate and far too sharp. "So it became a dick-measuring contest?" she said sweetly, purring in pure enjoyment. She clasped her hands together, delighted. "Wonderful. Humans remind me of my kind more and more... The pride, the posturing, the need to be taller than your rival... mm, I so get them."
Aria giggled behind her hand.
Nyx sighed with affection.
Luna smirked, vindicated.
Bastet rolled her eyes but didn’t deny it.
Kaiden just stared out the window, amazed by what was created here, though he did have a little smirk on his lips.
Yeah. That sounded exactly like the kind of logic guilds lived by.
Their transport slowed as they approached the central staging grounds. For once, this was a piece of flat, reinforced terrain not dominated by guild ego. Hundreds of tents, outposts, scanning stations, and temporary watchtowers sprawled across the basin below the cliffs. This was where all the guilds and other organizations were free to be without anyone claiming they were stepping into their base’s radius.
The armored vehicle hissed as it parked with the runes along its sides dimming, losing their luster.
The doors clicked open.
Kaiden stepped out first, boots meeting the dust of a frontier that promised fortune or death in equal measure. His girls followed, stretching, adjusting weapons, staring up at the carved guild-palaces with the awe of newers and the hunger of challengers.
A new battlefield.
A new opportunity.
And their next step toward being living legends, not just celebs but mighty awakened who struck fear into the hearts of their enemies.
Now, one might wonder: why would Kaiden and co e here, knowing they had so many enemies? The truth was that they were strong, but not near the peak, not even close. Right now, their assailant didn’t even need to be of Vespera’s caliber - an S-tier awakened in the level 100s - to attack them for it to be over.
A single A-tier in the level 70s might end it all. Maybe not even A but B-tier...
But then why on Earth would they e here? Even if the rewards were tantalizing, surely they should’ve continued grinding in obscurity, using their two allied guilds to obtain dungeons that were private and well defended.
Then, they could upload the videos once the clear was done, letting them grind not only levels but views as well.
The question had two answers.
First, Kaiden and his girls understood painfully well how slippery the attention span of a human was.
Even they, a group doing a wide variety of content, could bee boring and repetitive if they did not continue inventing. Their incredibly swift rise in popularity came from them having very dramatic situations that were recorded and uploaded, yes, but also from the innovativeness of their content, making things nobody else dared to make, filming situations no one else had filmed.
They were trend setters, one could argue, and they would be quite right based on the evidence of the new ’meta,’ shaped by the Sinners.
And that meta?
It was nothing like what the awakened world had considered "normal."
Ever since the apocalypse’s arrival, awakened had treated themselves as godlike warriors, too mighty to lower themselves for entertainment. Ordinary unawakened civilians - mockingly called moners - were beneath them.
Content creation, as the elites sneered, was something unawakened did because they had no power. It was akin to paring the profession of a prestigious soldier, flying the most expensive jets of the country, to silly YouTubers.
It was simply outrageous.
Thus, almost all of the content posted was of the awakened bat footage or streamed dungeon clears, but it was partly to provide proof of their dominance, trophies for bragging rights. It was basically them saying, ’Yeah, I’m a supreme fucking existence, here’s the proof. Now bow down.’
Anything beyond that?
React videos, lifestyle clips, edic bits, skits, challenges, slice-of-life footage?
That was "loser stuff."
Stuff for F-tiers scraping for relevance.
Stuff you only did when you were so weak you couldn’t get real clout from real fights.
Not many people cared to watch those ’rejects,’ finding them miserable.
Then Kaiden happened.
At first, people mocked him.
Awakened sneered that he was embarrassing their entire kind.
Unawakened rolled their eyes, assuming he’d be another wannabe influencer leeching off the awakened platform.
Even low-tier awakened acted like he was a clown for doing what he was doing.
But then... the numbers hit.
And kept hitting.
And then they skyrocketed.
Unawakened viewers swarmed him in the millions, sick of the distant, arrogant, untouchable awakened elites. Or simply bored with their slop content, which was often incredibly repetitive.
Kaiden had something none of them had: relatability, humor, openness, and the sense of watching real people live their lives, though, of course, sprinkled with the right amount of absurdity and supernatural that made it interesting to watch.
His girls joined, his stances evolved, his systems activated, and suddenly the awakened elites could no longer ignore the metrics.
He was monetizing better than almost all guilds. From the Awakened Media Platform alone, the Sinners were bringing in more revenue than some of the bigger guilds - though, of course, such organizations had other sources of ine as well.
He was influencing culture more than most A-tiers, shaping the opinions of both awakened and unawakened alike.
And worst of all?
He was proving that awakened didn’t need to rely solely on bat prowess to grow rich and famous.
Variety could be power.
Personality could be power.
Creativity could be power.
And in a world where 15% of humanity was awakening, very few could stand out through simple strength anymore. "Strong fighter with a sword" wasn’t a personality. "Ice mage" wasn’t a brand unless they were far above the rest, perhaps.
But Kaiden?
Kaiden was the blueprint.
And so began the revolution.
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